Page 44 of The Bachelor

Shane sent her flowers of congratulations. Everyone at work, all twenty-two staff members, had seen them arrive. After she’d spent that extra ten minutes alone with Shane in the meeting room, and now the flowers, it was giving everyone ideas. Pat was wary. Some of the girls were jealous, some glancing at her disdainfully. The guys were looking at her like she had hidden magical sexual powers that they now wanted to explore.

One guy in particular had started flirting with her, getting too close to her in the break room. It made her extremely uncomfortable.

She heard two of the girls talking about her as she walked past their cubicle.

She can’t sing for shit.

I guess I could get a hold on a song if I sucked someone’s dick, too.

When she stopped and stared at both of them, hard, hoping to shame them into shutting up, they just looked at her blandly. They didn’t even care that she’d heard them.

Shane came into Rusted Truck twice, also noteworthy, though she had no idea why. She tried to avoid him, but he would come into her space and sit down like he belonged there. He seemed to be taking the “waiting for her” literally.

Wednesday he texted her. She knew it was him, because she had gone so far as to enter his number in her phone, which was a mistake. She’d been tempted to text him almost daily. That kiss weighed on her mind and kept her up at night.

It’s my birthday.

For an hour, she had agonized over how to answer that, but she couldn’t bring herself to just not respond at all. It was his birthday and that was special. How petty and rude would she look if she didn’t at least offer well wishes? It must be his thirtieth. She wanted him to have a great birthday. Under any other circumstances, she would make him a card or buy him a drink.

Happy Birthday! Enjoy your cake.

I’d rather enjoy you.

The feeling was mutual but she just wrote “haha” and left it at that in an attempt to keep him at arm’s length.

It reminded her body of how good it had felt to be held by him. The hardest thing of all was that she associated him with pleasure, but also with comfort. She was scared and upset by what was happening in the office and the horrible paradox was that he was the cause of it, yet she wanted nothing more than for him to hug her and make her feel better.

It was a muddled mess.

Her nerves were strung out.

She couldn’t sleep.

At night, she lay in the small room of her apartment and stared at the ceiling, imagining her song becoming a huge hit. Jolene singing it on her tour, album sales through the roof. A Grammy. Other offers from other artists. It was crazy. She knew it might not go that way at all. It might be the turkey on the album and never play on the air once. It might never even make it onto an album. But if it did and it got air time… the possibilities were endless. A small secret part of her also wanted Chance to find out the truth and welcome her into the family with open arms, but that was even less likely than the song becoming a hit record.

During the day at Rusted Truck it was hard to think that anything good might happen at all. She had a target on her back, and no friends save Lauren, and she was trying to stay out of the whole mess so that other co-workers didn’t turn on her as well. Avery understood. She didn’t expect Lauren to put her own neck on the line to defend her. But she wasn’t sure how to defend herself. Or if she even should.

By Friday the pit in her gut was so huge, she went into the restroom at lunch, afraid she was actually going to throw up. Nothing happened, but after hovering over the toilet for five minutes, she emerged clammy, hands shaking, to find her co-worker Charlotte washing her hands at the sink and watching Avery in the mirror.

“Is everything okay?” Charlotte asked. “That gagging sounded like you need to pee on a stick.”

There was a certain amount of glee in Charlotte’s voice that irritated the crap out of Avery. She imagined this was how it had been for her mother. Everyone with an opinion, everyone with a judgment. “I’m not pregnant. But thanks for the concern.” Yeah, that was sarcasm. Not her usual thing, but right now warranted it.

Charlotte was from New York and she had a flat accent that always sounded like she was mocking Avery. “Too bad. I’m sure the child support from a producer would have you living in style.”

“Kiss my ass, Charlotte,” Avery said. It just flew out of her mouth, a week’s worth of tongue-biting swirling down the drain. She couldn’t help herself. She was sick of being the recipient of office gossip.

Charlotte’s eyebrows rose. “Charming.” She pulled her lipstick out of her pocket and lined her mouth with a deep berry color. Charlotte was a brunette with olive skin, her features elegant. “I guess that whole country-cutie thing you have going on is just an act. You’re as big of a bitch as the rest of us, you just hide it behind freckles and a twang.”

Avery had nothing to say to that. Feeling like she might explode, she slapped the door open and went down the hallway, refusing to look left or right and meet anyone’s eye. Snatching her guitar off her chair, she walked straight out to the parking lot. She needed air. It wasn’t cold outside, just crisp, and she was wearing a sweater. She plunked herself down on the sidewalk, feet on the asphalt, right behind an old Cavalier. Finding a note, she closed her eyes and tried to relax, her fingers idling over the strings.

All week she had been thinking about relationships and sex and how it was such a mistake to mix them with business. But she supposed the overlapping had been going on from the minute of her conception. Did it even matter if she stood her ground with Shane if someone found out the bigger truth—that she was Chance’s half-sister?

But no one was going to know that unless she swiped his coffee cup and had his saliva tested for DNA. Which she was not going to do, because that was invasive and not fair to Chance. Her secret had to stay a secret.

The door opened behind her and she hoped it was someone who would have no interest in speaking to her.

“Hey.”

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